Category: News
In News
Grand Teton Music Festival’s “La Boheme” this weekend – Jackson Hole News & Guide
The Grand Teton Music Festival will debut its inaugural opera, “La Boheme,” this weekend in Walk Festival Hall. It’s a historic moment for the orchestra, founded 60 years ago in a tent at the base of Teton Village. Festival conductor Sir Donald Runnicles is world-renowned for conducting opera and has...
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Guest pianist grows with Schumann – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Ingrid Fliter owes her career as an international touring pianist to Schumann, Chopin and other composers of the romantic era. “This kind of music I grew up on,” she said, speaking from her native Buenos Aires, where she was visiting family. “It has been inside of me since I was...
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Four notes, glissando and lots of plucking – Jackson Hole News & Guide
...Elisabeth Remy Johnson has been performing with the Grand Teton Music Festival since 2016, but this will be her first performance outside Walk Festival Hall. “It takes a little extra planning to move the harp, so I am very excited that this worked out,” Johnson said. There are not a...
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Grand Teton Music Festival to Livestream ‘La bohème’ with Jose Simerilla Romero & Nicole Cabell – OperaWire
The Grand Teton Music Festival in Wyoming is set to livestream its semi-staged production of “La bohème.” The production will be streamed on August 27 and features an all-star cast led by Nicole Cabell as Mimì, Jose Simerilla Romero as Rodolfo, Meechot Marrero as Musetta, Ryan Speedo Green as Colline,...
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GTMF’s Hooten star in Williams concerto – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Hear the name John Williams and you likely will think of the guy who wrote the rousing themes to “Star Wars,” “Indiana Jones” and scores of other blockbuster movies. But does the word “composer” come to mind? Funny thing that it doesn’t immediately for so many people. After all, those...
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Beat it with festival percussionists – Jackson Hole News & Guide
The Grand Teton Music Festival’s percussion section has put together a traveling show as part of this year’s “On the Road” series, and will present it at 3 p.m. Thursday at Teton County Library and 3 p.m. Friday in the Center for the Arts Amphitheater. Both shows are free. “It’s...
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A Road Trip to Sample America’s Many, Many Music Festivals – The New York Times
I’m not sure that the residents of Jackson Hole, whether they are fortunate enough to enjoy their first or their fourth homes in sight of the Grand Tetons, quite understand what they have going for them at Walk Festival Hall, a happily unpretentious, 700-seat indoor theater beside the gondolas in...
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Finnish conductor established ‘French connection’ – Jackson Hole News & Guide
When you hear the phrase “French music” your brain likely recalls a certain sound, a certain mood, a certain palette musical colors — a layered shimmering of clustered noted and wide-open chords — a musical language that was dismissed as nonsense by the conservative critics of the late 19th and...
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GTMF serves Schubert’s ‘Trout’ tonight – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Musicians with the Grand Teton Music Festival will perform Schubert’s “Trout” Quintet as part of this week’s Chamber Music Series at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Walk Festival Hall. Also known as the Piano Quintet in A Major, it is five movements for piano and stringed instruments. Austrian composer Franz Schubert...
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Idaho pianist wins Runnicles competition – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Pianist Truman Walker, of Eagle, Idaho, far left, was named the winner of the 2022 Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition last month. With him are third-place winner, vocalist Kerraline Bemis, of Kalispell, Montana; runner-up violinist Evelyn Lee, Rigby, Idaho; and judges Stephanie Key, Sir Donald Runnicles and David Coucheron....
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New Marsalis work highlights chamber program – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Wednesday night chamber music program at the Grand Teton Music Festival can offer some of the most exciting and satisfying musical experiences of the season. Audiences usually hear a couple of familiar works by favorite GTMF orchestra players. Often, however, programs also include something different an unexpected: a rare gem...
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Mahler’s ‘Resurrection’ symphony calls to all – Jackson Hole News & Guide
The climactic symphony contemplates the afterlife with “bone-chilling” hymns and calls to the dead. At the halfway point of its 2022 season, the Grand Teton Music Festival will showcase Mahler’s Symphony No. 2 in C minor, “Resurrection,” with nearly 200 musicians packing the stage at Walk Festival Hall this weekend....
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Violinist Hadelich hopes to thrill – Jackson Hole News & Guide
One of the Grand Teton Music Festival’s favorite guests, Augustin Hadelich returns to Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village to perform chamber music on Wednesday — Ravel’s Violin Sonata with pianist Jason Hardink — and to join the Festival Orchestra on Friday and Saturday for Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 2....
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Adventurous programing for Sunday piano recital – Jackson Hole News & Guide
The Grand Teton Music Festival continues its Sunday Matinee Piano Recital series with Joyce Yang, silver medalist in the 2005 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. Yang promises an “incredibly challenging” program made up of “many small pieces of contrasting moods and colors.” “I hope people will feel like there’s a...
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O’Donovan brings touch of gold to GTMF – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Aoife O’Donovan visits Jackson Hole for the first time since appearing with Crooked Still some 13 or more years ago. This time she brings her band from her January release, “Age of Apathy” — Isa Burke on electric guitar, fiddle and vocals; Ethan Jodziewicz on vocals and bass and Robin...
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Aoife O’Donovan adds singer-songwriter artistry to GTMF lineup – Buckrail
Stylistically wide-ranging, Aoife O’Donovan lives in many musical spaces. With progressive Americana at the core of her artistry, O’Donovan is a Grammy-winning vocalist, guitarist, and pianist chiefly known as founder of string band Crooked Still. She’s also one-third of two different female trios—Sometymes Why and I’m with Her—the latter with...
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Jests and jesters animate orchestra program – Jackson Hole News & Guide
With guests the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Festival Orchestra presents John Adams’ “Absolute Jest,” a pastiche that takes bits from several of Beethoven’s late string quartets, as well as other fragments and “tattoos” you’d swear you heard before, and mashes them up into a fast, fun and fractalled work...
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Stripling plays for the love of Pops – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Byron Stripling presents the first Gateway concert of the Grand Teton Music Festival’s 2022 season, a show featuring his touring rhythm section, a big band lineup of horns enlisted by the festival and vocal powerhouse Carmen Bradford. The music will start at 8 p.m. Thursday in Walk Festival Hall. ...Thursday’s...
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Pianist Barnatan ‘time travels’ for matinee recital – Jackson Hole News & Guide
There’s something undeniably mysterious about music. Like how a youngster might be drawn to the piano even through no one else in his family is especially musical. Or how composers converse across the decades and centuries, their ideas seemingly traveling forward and backward through time. Or just how certain aspects...
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Pianist Ohlsson stars in ‘Beethoven Extravaganza’ – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Oh, Ludwig. Perhaps Western civilization’s first “modern” composer, Beethoven (1770-1827) transformed music, pushing it beyond its classical conventions and using it to convey and explore the deep philosophical questions of his (and, still, ours) day. One can witness the metamorphosis through the 17 string quartets he wrote between 1799 and...
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Patriotic Pops Concert – Jackson Hole Daily
As conductor Sir Donald Runnicles leads the orchestra, Broadway star Capathia Jenkins sings “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to the large crowd gathered on the Center for the Arts lawn Monday evening during the Grand Teton Music Festival’s Fourth of July concert. (Jackson Hole Daily front page coverage) Photo: Kathryn Ziesig
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Amid Ukraine War, Orchestras Rethink ‘1812 Overture,’ a July 4 Rite – The New York Times
Some ensembles have decided not to perform Tchaikovsky’s overture, written as commemoration of Russia’s defeat of Napoleon’s army. ...In recent weeks, more than a dozen ensembles in Connecticut, Indiana, New York, Ohio, Wisconsin and Wyoming and elsewhere have decided to forgo the piece because of concerns about backlash from Ukrainians...
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A Guide to Jackson, Wyoming’s Increasingly Chic Mountain Town – The Wall Street Journal
Wyoming’s premier ski town is a magnet in summer too. Here, four locals—including a rancher and pro snowboarder—on where to spot wildlife, paddleboard in Grand Teton National Park and sip cocktails with a view As the largest town in Jackson Hole—the broad Wyoming valley in the shadow of the Teton...
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GTMF goes deep for 61st season – Jackson Hole News & Guide
After two years of COVID-induced uncertainty and instability, we all deserve a little something — a treat or a bonus, something that begins to make up for all the time lost social distancing and isolating. The Grand Teton Music Festival is doing its part. Its 61st season begins Sunday and...
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Music festival starts early for youngsters – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Teton kids are the luckiest. They grow up with clean air to breathe, expansive forests to explore, mountains to climb, rivers to float, a loving community devoted to nourishing their bodies and minds — and the Grand Teton Music Festival. Jackson Hole’s classical music institution has over the years offered...
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The top 10 classical music festivals in the US this summer – Financial Times
Nestled at the base of the Teton mountain range in Wyoming and within easy reach of Yellowstone National Park, the Grand Teton Music Festival offers unrivalled access to the natural world as well as eight weeks of music. Under the leadership of music director Donald Runnicles, the programme will open...
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3 idyllic US music festivals to attend this summer – Pianist Magazine
Summer is swiftly approaching, and with it comes the opportunity to take a road trip and enjoy music outdoors. The US is home to many summer festivals with robust offerings, but three in particular stand out for their idyllic settings and the spotlight they shine on the piano this season. The...
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Music Festival takes to airwaves – Jackson Hole News & Guide
With the recent announcement of its Musical World Tour set for March 24 and preliminary details about its 61st summer season of concerts, set to start July 3, the Grand Teton Music Festival is generating some early season buzz among the region’s classical musical community. “Buzz” naturally leads to “obsessive...
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Music Festival lays out full 8-week season – Jackson Hole News & Guide
If you need something to hang onto to get through these darkest days of winter, hang onto this: It’s a mere 158 days until the opening concert of the 2022 Grand Teton Music Festival. The venerable Jackson Hole nonprofit announced preliminary details of its 61st season, which is scheduled to...
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Conductor Donald Runnicles Knighted – Berliner Morgenpost
The original article is in German; below is a translation via Google Translate. Prince Charles has knighted the General Music Director of the Deutsche Oper, Donald Runnicles, at Windsor Castle. It's a great old tradition, whereby in the Middle Ages the accolade could take place right on the battlefield. It...
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Beloved wind quintet visits for the holidays – Jackson Hole News & Guide
That’s kind of a hand-crafted program we worked on with Donald Runnicles and Jeff Counts,” WindSync horn player Anni Hochhalter said of Monday’s concert, speaking last week from Houston. “It’s definitely holiday-inspired, but also fun and elegant Christmas is one of those times when the extended family gathers so that...
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Looking Back at Grand Teton Music Festival’s 60th Season
Celebrating a Successful Season and Welcoming a New Director of Development and Board Members JACKSON, WY, October 12, 2021 – Grand Teton Music Festival’s (GTMF) 60th Season, which boasted 20 sold-out concerts and an audience of 16,000 people both in-person and online, marked a monumental season. Over one thousand people...
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Josefowicz, Stravinsky close festival – Jackson Hole News & Guide
“This will be my first real solo violin concerto back in public — not virtual, not chamber.” ~Leila Josefowicz, violin As the centerpiece of these final concerts of the festival’s 2021 season, Josefowicz will perform Stravinsky’s grossly overlooked Concerto for Violin in D Major, composed in 1931. Also on the...
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‘Freedom Songs’ continue to move forward – Julia Bullock will perform Jessie Montgomery’s work at GTMF – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Vocalist Julie Bullock performs Jessie Montgomery’s new song cycle, “Five Freedom Songs,” with the Grand Teton Festival Orchestra, Thursday through Saturday at Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village. The word “freedom” has become fraught with politics in the 21st century. Can one exercise one’s freedom without compromising the freedoms of...
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Beethoven, Bronfman and the universe – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Beethoven runs in pianist Yefim Bronfman’s blood. It’s only natural, since two of his teachers, Rudolph Serkin and Leon Fleisher, were widely considered among the 20th century’s greatest interpreters of Beethoven’s piano music. “My teacher Leon Fleisher said that when you play Beethoven, you feel like you are part of...
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Where Ancient Peaks Embrace Old Friends, Music Adds Its Wonder – Classical Voice North America by Thomas May
...It’s a setting that easily nourishes music’s transcendent power. No wonder so many of the musicians who make up the GTMF Orchestra are long-timers, returning, summer after summer, as if compelled by a migratory instinct. Numbering about 200 total, they come from 80 orchestras and more than 50 other institutions...
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Denève, Ehnes reunite at Walk Hall – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Traveling the world, meeting new people, working with old friends, all in the name of the profession you love — pianist-conductor Stéphane Denève lives the dream. “I don’t know how I’ve come to be so lucky to make music with all these great musicians,” he said recently from St. Louis,...
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A “Guest” Visit from Donald Runnicles at Grand Teton Music Festival – Memeteria by Thomas May
Gemma New was originally scheduled to make her Grand Teton Music Festival debut conducting this week’s full orchestral program. But when she had to cancel at the last minute, GTMF’s music director Sir Donald Runnicles stepped in to save the day, adding two more concerts to those for which he...
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Hitting the Sweet Spot: Third Coast Percussion at Grand Teton Music Festival – Memeteria by Thomas May
Week 4 of the Grand Teton Music Festival continued with an enthusiastically received performance by Chicago-based Third Coast Percussion making their Festival debut. Presented without intermission, the concert unfolded with unflagging energy as each member of the quartet — David Skidmore, Robert Dillon, Peter Martin, and Sean Connors — took...
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A Homecoming for the Grand Teton Music Festival – Memeteria by Thomas May
With its marriage of valley and dramatic, looming scarps, it’s obvious how the Jackson Hole area beckoned as an ideal spot to make music. The Grand Teton Music Festival opened on 2 July, following the all-too-familiar hiatus, and is now into Week 4 of a seven-week season — which also...
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Winners in 4th Runnicles Competition named – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Two pianists, harpist split $50K in scholarships after July 19 finals in fourth annual contest. Three young classical musicians got a major boost to their educations and maybe their careers last Monday when judges named the winners of the fourth annual Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition. Tanner Jorden, a...
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GTMF trombonist to share his ‘Hallucinations’ – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Back in the year 2000, when famed conductor-pianist Daniel Barenboim was still music director of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, he led the group in a performance of Leopold Mozart’s Concerto for Alto Trombone, with Australia-born trombonist Michael Mulcahy soloing. Barenboim was impressed enough with Mulcahy’s playing to invite him to...
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Jackson Hole News & Guide Music, July 28
Gateway percussion It’s difficult to know who is having more fun at a Third Coast Percussion performance: the audience or the performers. The Grand Teton Music Festival welcomes the Grammy-winning quartet to Walk Festival Hall as part of its new “Gateway Series” at 8 p.m. Thursday. Tickets cost $40. Founded...
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Harth-Bedoya leads orchestra, audience on tour of the world – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Wrapping up week three of its 2021 60th anniversary season, the Grand Teton Music Festival welcomes back guest conductor Miguel Harth-Bedoya to lead the Festival Orchestra in an international program evoking Brazil, Italy and old Hungary, with a characteristically charming work by Mozart, his Concerto for Flute and Harp in...
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Classical training meets jam-band bliss – Jackson Hole News & Guide
It’s time to make time for Time For Three. It has been five years, almost to the day, since the classically trained jam trio last performed in Jackson Hole, and a whole lot has happened since then: new music, new members, a soundtrack for a new movies, new teaching opportunities...
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The Grand Teton Music Festival Returns For Its 60th Season – Wyoming Public Media
The Grand Teton Music Festival is underway and it's celebrating its 60th season. Over seven weeks each summer, the Grand Teton Music Festival unites more than 200 celebrated orchestral musicians led by music director Donald Runnicles. The Grand Teton Music Festival (GTMF) is one of America's leading summer classical music festivals and...
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Festival premieres Eötvös’ ‘Deciding Machine’ – Jackson Hole News & Guide
A May 2020 article in The Wall Street Journal heralds the dawn of the age of the “decision machine,” when supercomputers and artificial intelligence are able to sort through the myriad possible consequences of complex, dynamic situations to predict the most likely outcomes. But the idea of such a mechanical...
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Walk Hall reopens with Kanneh-Mason, Dvořák – Jackson Hole News & Guide
The music returns to Walk Festival Hall on Thursday, Friday and Saturday night, when Kanneh-Mason joins the Festival Orchestra with Sir Donald Runnicles conducting. ...Cellist Sheku Kanneh-Mason loves performing. “When I perform, I feel most comfortable and most confident,” said the 22-year-old member of the sensational seven-sibling Kanneh-Mason clan. “I...
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6 musicians vie for $50k in scholarships – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Borah High School graduate Fernando Perez was overcome by joy last July to be named the first-place winner of the 2020 Donald Runnicles Musical Arts Scholarship Competition. “I’m thinking about all the memories I’ve had with music,” the flutist said between gasps, “my joy of playing with other musicians and...
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Giving people the music they deserve – Jackson Hole News & Guide
Great music, performed well, is for everyone. “And I believe everyone deserves it,” insisted Meaghan Heinrich, education curator for the Grand Teton Music Festival. “And that everyone has the capacity to understand it.” It takes matching the right piece of music with the right audience — and tailoring the way...
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Music Festival plays on Center lawn
Four outdoor concerts will be presented on the lawn outside the Center for the Arts, with many guest artists. One of the best ways to make an occasion special — be it a holiday, a road trip or a dinner party — is with music. Which is why for many...
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GTMF Featured in United Airlines’ Hemispheres Magazine
Returning for its 60th season, the Grand Teton Music Festival once again graces Jackson Hole, Wyoming, right next to Grand Teton National Park. This idyllic summer retreat attracts nearly 200 top musicians from around the country, led by internationally renowned music director Sir Donald Runnicles. The first week of concerts...
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GTMF rounds out its 60th season
Single tickets on sale for orchestral concerts, chamber recitals and ‘Gateway Series.’ If BBC Young Musician of 2016 Sheku Kanneh-Mason, violin superstar Leila Josefowicz or prodigious young conductor Gemma New weren’t enough to get classical music fans excited about the Grand Teton Music Festival’s 2021 season, the venerable valley arts...
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GTMF Featured in Symphony Magazine, Spring 2021
The Grand Teton Music Festival and Executive Director Emma Kail are featured in the "Festival Overtures" article of the Spring 2021 edition of Symphony Magazine, published by the League of American Orchestras. | Read full article